The Wexner Foundation

Proudly Announces
Its Thirteenth Class of
Graduate Fellows

Fellow

Graduate Program

Career Area

Rachel Alexander
Wendy Amsellem
Stephen Hazen Amoff
Aaron Bayer
Naomi Brenner
Ari Gauss
Laurie Hahn
Jane Kanarek
Brett Krichiver
Faye Lederman
Robin Leonard
Sacha Litman

Columbia University
New York University
Jewish Theological Seminary
RIETS/Columbia Teachers College

Jewish Communal Service

Julie Pelc
Ken Richmond
Jane-Rachel Sanow
Andrea Siegel
Miriam Heller Stem

Jewish Education
Jewish Education
Jewish Education
Judaic Studies
Jewish Communal Service
Rabbinic Program
Judaic Studies
Rabbinic Program
Jewish Education
Rabbinic Program
Jewish Communal Service
Rabbinic Program
Cantorate
Jewish Communal Service

UC Berkeley
New York University/J.T.S.
Jewish Theological Seminary
University of Chicago
Hebrew Union College - JIR

UC Berkeley
Hebrew Union College - JIR
Northwestern University
University of Judaism
Jewish Theological Seminary
Columbia University/J.T.S.
Columbia University
Stanford University

Judaic Studies
Jewish Education

The Wexner Foundation was created by Leslie H. Wexner, the founder

and chairman of The Limited Inc., in 1987. The Foundation is committed
to the recruitment and enhancement of Jewish leadership.

The Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program is designed to encourage the

most promising and talented Jewish men and women to pursue full-time
graduate studies leading to careers in professional Jewish leadership.
The program provides full academic tuition, generous living stipends,
and annual Foundation-sponsored institutes and learning experiences.
Fellowships are awarded to outstanding candidates who demonstrate
the potential to assume major leadership positions in the fields of Jewish
Education, Jewish Communal Service, the Rabbinate, the Cantorate
and, Jewish Studies.

The Wexner Foundation welcomes inquiries about its fellowship program
as well as about career opportunities in professional Jewish leadership.
For more information, please write to:

The Wexner Foundation Graduate Fellowship Program
6525 West Campus Oval, Suite 110, New Albany, Ohio 43054

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9/29
2000

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Building Jewish Identity

Donors discuss how to spread word
of the Jewish day school alternative.

JULIE WIENER

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

White Plains, N.Y.
arol Nemo vividly remembers
the day almost 20 years ago
when her son came home
upset from a Shabbat "honors"
retreat for teenagers from various Atlanta
Jewish schools.
As they were pulling his bag out from
the luggage compartment of the bus,
Dan stopped and said to her, "Mom,
why didn't you send me somewhere
where I'd learn something?"
He hadn't known any of the Shabbat
prayers or the blessing after meals and
"felt like a fool the entire weekend."
For Nemo, the comments of her son
— who attended Hebrew school —
were "like a dagger in my stomach."
"He was saying in that one sentence
what I'd felt all my life," said Nemo,
who had always felt her own religious
education was insufficient. "I figured out
something had to be done."
Soon after, Nemo became enamored
of day schools, which offer a more
intensive Jewish education than congre-
gational schools.
Although it came too late for Dan
— who his mother proudly says "only
dates Jewish girls" — Nemo played a
key role in founding Atlanta's Reform
day school, the Alfred and Adele Davis
Academy, and went on to help create
the New Atlanta Jewish Community
High School.
Nemo was one of almost 300 major
donors — people who had made a
recent gift of $100,000 or more to
Jewish day schools — gathered last
week at a first-time national "donor
assembly" sponsored by one of the
leading forces in the day school move-
ment, the Partnership for Excellence
in Jewish Education.

C

Seeking Support

The group, known as PEJE, was found-
ed three years ago by 12 partners —
including Michael Steinhardt, Edgar
Bronfman and Charles Schusterman,
who also recently came together for a
philanthropy devoted to synagogue
transformation and renewal — each
committing $1.5 million over five years.
PEJE has largely focused on fostering

the growth of new day schools, provid-
ing grants and expertise to 41 schools.
Day schools vary tremendously in
terms of their operating costs and
tuition, but according to a 1997 study
commissioned by one of PEJE's part-
ners, the Avi Chai Foundation, most
function with far less money budgeted
per pupil than is used in public schools.
Many day schools — which are gen-
erally funded through a combination
of tuition, fund-raising from individu-
als and allocations from federations —
are struggling with deficits while oth-
ers survive financially only by chargirq
tuition that middle-class families find
prohibitively high.
A number of foundations, including
Avi Chai, have experimented with pro-
viding tuition subsidies to encourage
people who would not be eligible for
financial aid to consider day schools.

Coming Together

Before coming to the assembly, "we
thought we Were alone" in the various
challenges day school leaders face, like
garnering allocations from federations,
said Scott Robinson, a donor to the
Denver Campus for Jewish Education,
community day school from kinder-
garten through high school.

Rabbi Joshua Elkin, executive directoi
of PEJE, estimates that 80 percent of
American Jews have no connection to
and little awareness about day schools.
"It's a message that needs to be
brought out," he said. "People need to
visit day schools and be brought closer."
About 40 percent of American Jewish
children receiving a Jewish education
attend day schools, a number that has
steadily increased in recent years. But
among liberal Jews, the vast majority
attend Hebrew schools.
In a keynote speech to the donors,
Jack Wertheimer, provost of the
Conservative movement's Jewish
Theological Seminary, urged day school
leaders to make greater efforts to sell
their cause to Jewish family foundation;
which currently give less than half of
their money to Jewish causes and about
2 percent to day schools.
Denver'S Robinson, who is Reform,
attended public school but got interests
in day schools when it was time to sene

